Tag Archives: HAFA

Fannie, Freddie & HAFA

fanniefreddieIn the Short Sale world, the question comes up now and then if FNMA (Fannie Mae) and FHLMC (Freddie Mac) participate in the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) Program.

The short answer is, no. Fannie and Freddie no longer offer the HAFA program. Freddie has a very informative page that outlines their policies that is worth a review, but for Fannie all we have is a verbal “no” from the file managers we talk with. We ask for each file where appropriate, and we consistently receive a “no.”

Here is the executive summary from the above linked site:

“Treasury’s HAFA program ends on December 31, 2013. However, Freddie Mac’s participation in the program expired on December 31, 2012. The materials on this Web page are only applicable to borrower evaluations on Freddie Mac mortgages conducted on or before December 31, 2012. The Freddie Mac Standard Short Sale is available for borrowers evaluated after December 31, 2012.”

If there is a short sale under review from over a year ago (yes, there are some) that is still waiting for approval, depending in lender and circumstance, they should still offer it.

For new applications/submissions however, the files are no longer being reviewed for HAFA.

You can get the PDF of this here.

Will Fannie & Freddie’ s New Timelines Help?

Everyone is looking for new ways to make Short Sales less frustrating. As a result, there has been a lot of interest in Fannie & Freddie’s new timelines effective June 15th for HAFA or other GSE programs and their impact on short sale timelines.

– Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will require servicers to make a decision within 30 days of receiving either an offer on a property or a completed Borrower Response Package (BRP) requesting short sale consideration.

– If more than 30 days are needed, servicers must provide the borrower with weekly status updates and come to a decision no later than 60 days.

– With a counteroffer, the borrower is expected to respond within 5 business days. The servicer must then respond within 10 business days.

In our experience though, this should not change the timelines we have seen for most of these files. It is good to have in writing, but in many respects this just puts in to writing what is already being done. A full overview at the link.